PEORIA, Ariz. -- The trip indeed made it out of the group chat.
And for the handful of prominent Mariners players who made the trek to Sunday’s Super Bowl to support their neighboring Seahawks in victory, the result had them dreaming of a 2026 two-fer in Seattle.
“I told my wife something along the lines of like, 'I can't wait for this to be us,’” first baseman Josh Naylor said on Tuesday in Arizona, as the Seahawks were celebrating with their parade back in Seattle.
“Roles are reversed, we're on the field, they're watching us. But just us in a sense of we're winning for the city, and we get to have a tour of the city out afterwards with a nice, big parade. I mean, I look forward to it.”
Naylor was the one who spearheaded the team effort to get to the big game via a group chat that began as the Seahawks were mounting their playoff run in January. Then he doubled down on the trip in-person with teammates at the Mariners’ FanFest the weekend between the NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl.
For a player who’s been in Seattle for a little more than six months -- if that, when accounting for in-season travel and the layover before returning on a five-year, $92.5 million free-agent contract in November -- his adoration for the region’s sports community could not have blossomed more richly.
That the Super Bowl was just the second NFL game he’s ever attended -- the first being a Buffalo Bills game that he trekked to as a kid, roughly 90 minutes from where he grew up -- says as much to how he’s latched himself to his new neighbors.
“I don't know, especially in Naylor's case, if I've seen a player get tied to a city so quickly,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “And their appreciation has been really shown back and forth, I think, and that's really cool to see.”
Naylor was flanked by Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez, George Kirby and Bryan Woo at the big game in Santa Clara, Calif.
Although tickets were hard to come by, and they paired off to separate seats at Levi’s Stadium because of that demand, all five players met up at various tailgates and pregame festivities. Raleigh and Woo were even seen pictured with Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald postgame, holding the Lombardi Trophy.
“We’re going to try to match them and do everything we can to do what they did,” Raleigh said. “It’s awesome for the city of Seattle.”
Raleigh was a regular at Seahawks games throughout the winter, once the Mariners reached the thick of their offseason. Much of that has been out of an effort to better connect with the city’s other sports teams, and through that correspondence, he’s become closer with Macdonald -- the NFL’s youngest coach at 38, and who reached the pinnacle in just his second season on the job.
“I just love how he goes about his business and how he preaches and stays consistent with what he says,” Raleigh said.
They connected on a more casual level at a comedy show hosted by Seattle-area native Adam Ray in December, the night after one of the Seahawks’ biggest wins of the year over the Rams. And it was actually Macdonald, a baseball standout in high school, asking most of the questions.
“That’s all he wanted to talk about, was baseball,” Raleigh said. “He was asking questions about scouting and how we go about it. And I guess we’re kind of comparing it to a defensive scheme. It was very similar -- how to read things, read hitters, all that stuff. He was very interested in that side of the game and handling all the pitchers and basically how you compartmentalize. He knows baseball.”
Going further, Rodríguez has called wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba "a good friend." The 2025 NFL Offensive Player of the Year attended a recent Rodríguez birthday party.
Neighboring teams celebrating each other’s success is hardly novel, but in Seattle, this era has the chance to grow in tandem. The 2025 season was the first in which both teams won their division in the same year, and each should be among their sport’s elite again in ‘26.
And that the Super Bowl trip made it out of the group chat -- the rare, celebrated moment when hypothetical vacation plans actually materialize into an excursion with friends -- signaled the growing bond that the Mariners core has amongst itself and to its city.